Country incurred a loss of Taka 40m financially due to continuous parliament boycott by the main opposition for the last four years.
Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) said this Sunday at a press conference at BRAC Inn Centre here, reports BSS.
The TIB urged the government to formulate a new law immediately to stop such continuous parliament boycott culture as continuous parliament boycott by the lawmakers is unprecedented in other democratic countries in the world.
The TIB research report was compiled as 'Parliament Watch' prepared covering the activities of the eight to fifteen sessions of the ninth Jatiya Sangsad (JS).
"The main opposition boycotted parliament for 282 days out of 337 days during the last four years of the ninth Jatiya Sangsad but the opposition lawmakers received their financial facilities of Taka 4,01,34,000 (Taka 3,558 per person per day)," said the report.
Terming it a bad instance for the parliamentary democracy, Dr Iftekharuzzaman, executive director of the TIB, said, "The percentage of the parliament boycott by the main opposition was 83.38 in the ninth parliament and 59.79 in eighth, 42.67 in seventh and 33.75 in the fifth parliament".
To ensure attendance of the lawmakers in the parliament and to make it effective, the government has to formulate a new act fixing the maximum timeframe of continued absence at 30 days instead of 90 days, said the TIB official.
In many democratic countries, the TIB official said, "There is no culture of 'sangsad boycott' by the political parties. So it should be avoided in the greater interest of our democracy." He said the political parties can choose the option of walkout from the parliament and they can do it repeatedly.
Besides, the country incurred a loss of Taka 1.9m for 72 hours and 22 minutes delay of the sittings of parliament session due to quorum crisis during eighth to fifteen sessions of the parliament and the average delay of each sitting was 24 minutes due to the crisis, said the report, adding that the average per minute cost for running a session of the parliament is Taka 78,000.
The average time per day for running the parliament was only three hours while it is eight hours in the United Kingdom and six hours in India, said the report.
The TIB officials including director (research & policy) Mohammad Rafiqul Hasan, programme manager Juliet Rossette, Fatema Afroz and representatives from different mass media participated in the conference.
